Chapter 609: A Meeting? A Coup! (End)

Seems... that really is the case?

After hearing Hearing Li Ang's analysis and questioning, the rebels who had been bowing somewhat dazedly, unsure whether they truly opposed the leader, were finally completely "awakened."

That's right! Exactly!

Although I can't explain it as clearly as little Perkins can, directly saying why, I'm sure I vaguely sensed something was off, which is why I felt Nathan wasn't fit to be leader!

No wonder, no wonder I suddenly bowed to little Perkins just now. Turns out, even though I couldn't articulate the reasoning, deep down I'd already been thinking this way...

"You... you lot, don't be fooled by him!"

Noticing the gradually shifting gazes in the room and the attitudes tilting toward the other side, the middle-aged man, realizing "the tide had turned," said urgently:

"Think carefully! How old is little Perkins this year? And aside from attending the public school for a few years as a child, he hasn't studied since he was thirteen or fourteen. How could he possibly know so much?

Use your brains! Could someone who only attended public school for three or five years really say what he just said? I suspect he isn't little Perkins at all!"

?!!!

After hearing the middle-aged man's reminder, the rebels in the room couldn't help but change expression, vaguely realizing that "little Perkins" was indeed a bit off.

A few who moved around the valley more and knew a bit about little Perkins's family situation immediately cast suspicious glances.

Nathan does have... a point?

Setting aside why the reportedly silent and reclusive little Perkins had suddenly become so eloquent, just based on his community public school dropout level, it would be impossible for him to improvise such a clearly structured analysis of the situation, let alone that progressively layered, aggressive, soul-piercing questioning that followed.

As expected, I was still a bit too hasty... but it doesn't really matter!

Feeling the suspicious gazes from the rebels, Hearing Li Ang couldn't help but narrow his eyes slightly, then sighed softly, saying with a look of disappointment:

"Lord Nathan, you still haven't understood where exactly you went wrong.

Do you think that questioning my identity, forcibly branding me an impostor, and eliminating me—the one who dared to stand up and question you—will make you, the leader, correct again?

Honestly, I now even feel a bit of pity for you. It's pitiful that you can't even figure out who your true opponent is!"

After a deliberately profound ramble that pulled the topic's focus back off course, Hearing Li Ang sat back down in his chair and, under everyone's gaze, calmly continued to stall for time:

"Lord Nathan, before I give you this answer, could you first answer me: what is the first textbook the community public school gives a six-year-old child after enrollment?"

"What are you going on about?"

Caught off guard by Hearing Li Ang's strange question, the middle-aged man quickly recovered, realizing he absolutely couldn't let the topic continue being dragged along by him, and interrupted directly:

"What we're discussing right now is your identity! It has nothing to do with any public school textbook! Don't try to use tricks like this to dodge my question!"

"I am answering your question!"

After prying the conversation back once again, Hearing Li Ang said at a rapid pace:

"If you've forgotten, let me tell you! The first set of textbooks at the community public school is reading, writing, and pronunciation, and the material used to teach children to recognize characters is the kingdom's history of the past three hundred years!

The first sentence every child in the kingdom learns when mastering reading and writing is exactly how the kingdom was born! Do you still remember what that sentence says?"

"Of course I remember!"

The middle-aged man struggled to seize back control of the conversation:

"But that sentence has nothing to do with the current situation..."

"It does!"

Relying on the excellent line delivery brought by 【Elite Performer】, a full-throated shout reclaimed the conversation, and Hearing Li Ang recited with a solemn expression:

"With the joint support of the nobility, citizens, factory owners, and merchants, the royal family drove away the former rulers, absorbed the scattered city-states that could not withstand the plunder of other kingdoms, and thereby established the present kingdom.

This is the first sentence the vast majority of people learn!"

"So how does that relate to the present..."

"So it wasn't that the royal family established the kingdom and then gained the support of the majority; rather, after gaining the support of the majority of forces, the present royal family successfully established the kingdom! This is something even children know!"

After finishing his interpretation of that sentence, Hearing Li Ang looked at the somewhat stunned middle-aged man and shook his head:

"If you truly intend to save this country, as you claim, then what you should do is demonstrate the change you can bring, so that more forces are willing to support you—not recklessly launch attacks that make everyone fear or even hate you!"

"Easy for you to say!"

Made somewhat flustered by Hearing Li Ang's words, the middle-aged man gritted his teeth and tried to argue:

"We are rebels! Those who would choose to join us are either destitute, wounded veterans, bankrupt common folk with nowhere to turn, or workers being squeezed until they can't survive.

What value can these people possibly offer? Why would those forces you mentioned support us? Rather than indulging in baseless fantasies, it's better to do as I say—first..."

"You see, this is where our biggest disagreement lies."

After interrupting the middle-aged man's argument once more, Hearing Li Ang shook his head and, with a serious expression, goaded:

"Lord Nathan, I don't know your background, but I do understand one thing...

Even though you founded the rebels yourself, deep down you fundamentally look down on people like us, and you don't believe we have any value!"

Damn!

Hearing Hearing Li Ang's words, the middle-aged man, realizing he had misspoken, looked alarmed and hurriedly tried to cover:

"This isn't a matter of looking down on anyone or not! I'm stating facts! Whether nobility, merchants, or parliament—no one will support us!"

"Then have you ever thought about why those people won't support us?"

Feeling the slight tremor from the little mirror in his embrace, along with a pat on his belly from a dog's paw, and knowing that Senior Auntie Auntie Ai Ma was almost here, Hearing Li Ang, now reassured, spoke unhurriedly:

"Because under your leadership, we are nothing but a will-o'-the-wisp that burns wherever it goes, and we've never even opened our mouths in the sunlight to state what we truly want!

Or to put it more bluntly, precisely because you never looked down on us from the bottom of your heart, and never tried to uncover our value, the rebels in your hands are just weapons for launching attacks—of course they get no support!"

While speaking, Hearing Li Ang secretly touched the horn of Hearing Heishanyang and peeked at the soul states of the rebels.

Annoyance, resentment, suspicion...

Stable!

After his deliberate provocation, the rebels had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the middle-aged Watching Watching Qiaoshuya. Once Senior Auntie Auntie Ai Ma arrived, when the middle-aged Watching Watching Qiaoshuya opened the door to fish people out, they might not even be willing to follow him!

"Lord Nathan!"

Having entered the conference room and, in just over the length of a single meal, driven the rebels to the brink of disbandment, Hearing Li Ang continued to pour oil on the fire:

"Over all these years, the veterans who've retired due to injuries number in the thousands just around the royal capital; and the workers who risk having their limbs crushed by machines, laboring over ten hours a day at high intensity, yet whose wages can barely feed their families—those number in the hundreds of thousands at the very least!

And then there are the small workshops that keep going bankrupt under the pressure of the great factories; the farmers whose land has been seized and whose grain prices have been driven down, leaving them no choice but to till the soil on noble estates; and the impoverished citizens who can barely find a single stable job…

Do you have any idea how many people that adds up to in total?"

"I… uh… roughly…"

"You couldn't possibly know! Because you've never thought anything of people like us, so you've never even bothered to spend any time paying attention—how could you possibly know about something like this?"

Facing the middle-aged man who had been choked into speechlessness, Li Ang—who himself didn't know exactly how many there were—slowly rose to his feet and said with an earnest expression:

"With so many people living in misery, yearning for change, if you truly saw them and were willing to lend a hand, so that even one in ten… or even one in a hundred of them began to identify with us, no one would dare ignore our opinions!

If you did that, even if the royal family didn't support us, they wouldn't arrest us; even if the nobles didn't support us, they wouldn't dare keep bullying us; even if the merchants and factory owners didn't support us, they wouldn't loathe us or even see us as enemies!"

"…"

"Once we begin to raise our voices in the sunlight, and the citizens and workers see in us the hope of change, this first force will slowly begin to drift toward us!

And once we have that real fulcrum, there's so much more we can do from there!"

"The royal family wants to check the nobles and rein in the ever-growing merchant class; the Parliament wants to limit the power of the royal family and the nobles, and regulate the commercial conduct of the merchant guilds; the nobles want to seize more power and get a real slice of the commercial pie; and the merchants want to shake off their shackles, establish more laws favorable to commerce, and prevent themselves from being squeezed out by the other factions…"

After briefly laying out the basic demands of each faction in the kingdom, Li Ang—while calculating the time of Senior Auntie Auntie Ai Ma's arrival—earnestly painted a grand picture:

"To gain support, you must first make yourself valuable enough!

Once we truly become a force, we become a weight heavy enough to matter. When these factions are locked in their struggles, we can throw ourselves onto the scale and tip its direction. In exchange, the faction we support must pay us a certain price.

Factory owners who want our support to avoid being squeezed by the royal family and nobles will have to give up some wage room for ordinary people; the royal family, wanting to use the citizens and workers to suppress the old nobles, will have to grant more protections in legislation;

And if Parliament wants the support of the citizens, it will not only have to help push the relevant legislation through, but even give up seats in Parliament…"

Pausing slightly at this point, Li Ang surveyed the expressions of the rapt rebels in the room, and said in a slightly raised tone:

"Gentlemen! Once the people following us have truly tasted the benefits we bring, and more people see the meaning of having someone speak for them, more and more people will begin to drift toward us!

And once we truly grow strong—becoming a force comparable to the royal family, the nobles, Parliament, and the merchant guilds—we can even turn the tables and actively force the other factions to make concessions to us!"

"By that point, nobles who don't want to be crushed flat will have to court us! Merchants and factory owners worried about bankruptcy from boycotts will have no choice but to treat us favorably!

And as our seats in Parliament grow, when the Prime Minister issues decrees, he'll have to consider our opinions! When the royal family makes important decisions, they'll even have to consult us first! And this! This isn't even the end!"

Still… still not the end? We're already this fierce, and there's something even fiercer coming after?

Hearing that this wasn't even the finish line, the rebels in the room truly couldn't take much more. One by one they clenched their fists, breathing rapidly, their eyes fixed dead on the seemingly glowing "Little Bakins," desperate to hear just how fierce the future rebels could get.

Li someone's grand pie-in-the-sky, for those old political hands truly versed in the game, would fall apart the moment they gave it a taste—the filling clearly wasn't stuffed solid enough.

After all, while this scheme's feasibility wasn't zero, and was certainly better than mere pipe dreams, the margin of that "better" was rather limited.

Just figuring out how to unite everyone and prevent them from being co-opted and split was already an unavoidable challenge, let alone how to deal with the counterattacks from the other factions, or even their combined assault. If these problems couldn't be solved, it would likely just drag everyone into an endless quagmire of bickering.

But for rebels whose average education was community public school, or even direct Zhijietai Sect dropout, and who couldn't write anything beyond their own names, this stack of glossy, beautiful pies was already enough to knock a person out cold with their fragrance.

As for being co-opted and split, or counterattacks and assaults…

Don't make me laugh. After all these years of being chased by the army and secret police, not daring to show our faces, forced to hide in this valley eight hundred miles from the royal capital building mud houses, where stepping out to take a piss might run into a big tiger baring its fangs—could things possibly get worse than they already are?

……

It's over! Completely over!

Watching the rebels in the room all staring at Li Ang with wild, feverish eyes, no one left looking at him, the middle-aged man felt a chill run through his entire body.

The Water Bottle Director was right… not a single word off! This person, who might or might not be Little Bakins, is truly dangerous beyond measure.

He had painstakingly built this up for so many years, finally gathering a force capable of assaulting the Airdock Tower, but in less than thirty minutes, this man had destroyed everything.

He hadn't just destroyed the rebels—he had destroyed the middle-aged man's own plan to assault the Airdock Tower, conceal the kingdom's mineral resources, and thereby avert war.

It's over! From this moment on, everything is over!

Gritting his teeth hard, the middle-aged Watching Watching Qiaoshuya stared fixedly at the "Little Bakins" across from him, regretting that last night, upon discovering all six pointers had begun to move, he hadn't gone over and killed him on the spot—and had even given him the chance to attend the meeting!

I'm truly a fool!

Watching "Little Bakins" rise to his feet under everyone's expectant gaze, seemingly about to say something more, the middle-aged man couldn't help but take a deep breath, then slowly rose to his feet as well.

"Lord Nathan?"

Noticing his movement, Li Ang's brow lifted slightly. He stopped speaking and gazed at him, asking first:

"Is there anything else you wish to say?"

"Yes."

The middle-aged man nodded slowly, then opened his mouth and said:

"I was thinking, if back then I… Nicole?"

Accompanying his startled voice, the door behind Li Ang creaked open, as if pushed by someone. Li Ang's heart gave a sudden lurch, and he turned to look—and then…

"Bang!"

A silver-white threaded nail suddenly punched out through Li Ang's chest and vanished into the empty doorway.

And that wasn't the end. Before the shot Li Ang could even turn his head back, the middle-aged man, who hated him to the bone, squeezed the trigger repeatedly—bang bang bang—firing seven shots in a row, blasting the back of Li Ang's heart into a bloody pulp!

"Huh?"

"Little Bakins?!"

"Nathan!!!!!!!!!!"

"What I meant to say was, if only I'd done this back then too!"

Having emptied the magazine into the back of the "Little Bakins" who had ruined everything, the middle-aged man—still burning with hatred as he faced the rebel members in the room who had betrayed him—tossed aside his nail gun, pointed at the rebels, and sneered:

"And you idiots! You really think doing what he said would work?

Those nobles and merchants aren't running charities—do you think they'll obediently follow the kingdom's laws and play fair above board with you?"

"Heh, I won't deny that Little Bakins has the ability to do what he claimed. After all, he only needed the length of a single meal to make all of you betray me—he does have a terrifying talent in that regard."

But do those nobles and merchants need to win against Little Bucking with their mouths like I do? All they need to do is spend a little money, hire some desperate fool, take a gun, and do to me what I just did… bang! 」

After raising his hand to make a shooting gesture, the middle-aged man sneered:

「Wake up! The only one who can truly save the kingdom is me!

No matter how wonderful the path Little Bucking points out for you looks, with his trash ability that can only make people bow, he simply can't protect his own safety! Once he, this leader, is dead, everything will be nothing but empti— you… why aren't you dead yet? 」

「Sorry about that… ptooey! 」

After crawling up and spitting out the salty, bloody foam in his mouth, Hearing Li Ang touched the hole in his chest that was healing, then covered his clothes back up, turned around, and showed an apologetic smile to the rebels in the room whose brains were on the verge of crashing.

「I just realized that my ability seems to be more than just making people bow — I think there's also this undying body thing. 」

(End of this chapter)